The C2 1963-1967 Sting Ray Coupe Almost Had a Hatchback

We recently shared with you the origin of the now-iconic 1963-’67 Corvette Sting Ray coupe roof. Time is not always kind to designs. The 1938 Adler Trumpf was an interesting but quirky-looking car. It was definitely very advanced for its day, but overall looks extremely dated. The 1963-’67 Corvette Sting Ray Coupe is still stunning from every angle and is today, truly an iconic automotive design.

The Adler Trumpf roof almost looks out of place on the rest of the car. But the roof was the perfect coupe roof for Bill Mitchell’s Stingray Racer. The Adler Trumpf was photographed at the GM Tech Center in July 1959. By October 1959, the roof design was graphed onto a fullsize clay model of the XP-720 and approved as the basic design for the next Corvette. It took Larry Shinoda and his team, with guidance from Bill Mitchell, a year to work out the finished shape. As you can see from the GM Archives documentation photographs acquired from the GM Heritage Center, by the end of December 1960, the final shape of the Sting Ray was completed and the team was working on surface details.

Sometime in 2015, I happened upon the color photograph of the silver ’63 split-window coupe, 1963 convertible and blue-lit 1959 Stingray Racer. I had seen this very photograph in various Corvette books for decades, but did not know when the photograph was taken. The photo clearly shows that the designers were working out surface details. Note that there are no vents on the front fender, but rather are integrated into the rear portion of the doors and the front portion of the rear fenders. There are gills above and below the rear bumpers, and the convertible shows the fuel filler cap on the driver’s side rear fender.

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For years, that’s all I ever noticed, that is until one day in 2015 I happened upon a large version of the photograph on the Internet. That’s when I had a “son-of-a-gun!” moment. What was never obvious in the small versions of the photo used in many Corvette books and magazines is the seam line on the rear deck, just inboard of the rear fender humps. The line starts at the rear leading edge of the rear deck, runs forward, then turns up over the B-pillar, across the top, down, and then runs to the other side of the rear leading edge.

This photo has been published for decades in numerous Corvette books and magazines. Typically, the printed image is small. This photo was taken in March 9, 1961. The GM Heritage Center did not have any paper documentation referring to the Sting Ray as having a trunk/hatchback feature.

As I’ll point out in the black & white GM Archives photos, this is not a “tape” line, but a scribe line. The “Occam’s razor” concept is, “All things being equal, the simplest explanation is usually the correct one.” The concept slices away a host of competing conclusions, leaving the simplest and most likely conclusion in place; thus, it is a “razor.”

What we are looking at is that the designers and engineers that were working on the 1963 Sting Ray Coupe were considering a hatchback, although at the time, my guess is that they simply thought of it as a trunk, as Corvettes from 1953 to that time all had a formal trunk. Today, we call it a hatchback.

As explained in Karl Ludvigsen’s book, Corvette: America’s Star Spangled Sports Car, Mitchell saw the Sting Ray first as a coupe. After the coupe was designed, they worked out the convertible, and then the hardtop. The open space behind the front seats created a sensation of expansiveness in what is otherwise a small car that fits like a glove. Getting things in and out of the coupe’s rear storage space could be challenging, but it made a limited-use sports car more usable. The 1963-’67 Sting Ray coupe has 10.5 cubic-feet of storage space, and 8.4 cubic-feet in the convertible.

When the Mako Shark-inspired C3 came in 1968, many were surprised the car did not have the Mako Shark-II’s Sting Ray-like coupe roof, but instead the roof had side-sails and only had 6.7 cubic-feet of storage space behind the seats. Corvette coupes and convertibles had very limited storage space from 1968-’77. If the convertible top was down, there was no storage space, unless you want to tote around a few issues of Vette magazine.

It wasn’t until I found a large version online that I noticed the line on the rear deck that wraps around the B-pillar and roof. In this enlargement, note the glint highlight of the trunk/deck line on the driver’s side. This was not a “tape” line; it was at least a scribe line or possibly the seam of the actual trunk/hatchback.

The convertible Corvette went away after 1975, and in 1978, designers gave the car a mid-cycle refresh with a beautiful wraparound glass fastback that looked perfect with the front and rear soft bumper covers, but the glass was fixed. The new glass fastback opened up the storage space to 8.4 cubic-feet. Then in 1979, the Cars & Concepts Company offered a hatchback kit for 1978 and 1979 Corvettes that allowed the glass roof to be lifted up. The kit got the attention of Corvette designers because the 1981 Turbo Vette 3 show car that had a hatchback rear glass, plus an all-aluminum 350 engine and an AIReasearch turbocharger.

The following year, the 1982 Collector Edition Corvette, a $3,617 option on top of the $18,290 base price, was chock full of beautiful trim features, unique graphics, interior upgrades, dedicated 1967 knock-off-bolt-on-inspired wheels and a hatchback. As you can see from the Cars & Concepts ad, the mechanism is the same as that used on the Collector Edition. No doubt, Chevrolet bought the design from Cars & Concepts.

It took 22 years for the Corvette coupe to finally get a hatchback roof. The 1982 Collector Edition was a beautiful sendoff for the C3 Corvette and accounted for 36.4 percent of all 1982 Corvettes. When the 1984 Corvette made its press debut in December 1982, the all-new Corvette had a hatchback as standard equipment. Like the 1982 hatchback, only the glass lifted up and provided customers with 12.6 cubic-feet of storage. That was the most amount of storage space ever offered in a Corvette. The 1962 Corvette had 12 cubic-feet of storage. 1986-’96 Corvette convertibles only had 6.6 cubic-feet of storage and nearly zero with the top down.

The hatchback feature has been on all Corvette coupes ever since, except for the C5 hardtop and C5 Z06. The C5 Corvette was arguably the most radical Corvette when it made its debut. One of the subtle design features of the C5 was that the car has twin fuel tanks mounted low on each side of the transaxle, whereas all previous Corvettes had their gas tanks sitting on top of the rear framerails. Not only did the low-mounted fuel tanks help lower the C5’s center of gravity, the design allowed the rear storage area to extend farther back, providing whopping 24.8 cubic-feet of storage. And to provide even better access to the rear storage area, the rear glass and rear deck are part of the hatchback. Because of the extra space in the back, the C5 convertibles had 13.9 cubic-feet of storage, more than the C4 coupe!

This is the B&W version of the color image that has been in print over the decades. Note the date in the lower left corner: 3-9-61. The production 1963 Sting Ray caught heat for all of its fake vents and split-window. It’s good that they dialed it back from this presentation.

Some have called the C6 Corvette, “C5 2.0” because the basic design is so similar to the C5; however, it is vastly improved. C6 and C7 Corvette designs are empirical, meaning one design was built upon the previous design, but was made much better. The hatch design is likewise similar in that the glass and rear deck are part of the hatchback. The C6 coupe has 22.4 cubic-feet of storage and the convertible has 11 cubic-feet of storage. The C7 coupe has 16.4 cubic-feet of storage space and the convertible has 10 cubic-feet of storage. Corvette designers were mainly interested in making the C6 and C7 a smaller, tighter car with less mass.

The Corvette is so steeped in performance and racing glory it is easy to overlook the design feature of the hatchback. It is what can make a modern Corvette a daily driver, a performance car that can carve canyons with best, take a weekend trip, and even go grocery shopping. When you consider that the hatchback was conceived in 1960, it shows us that designers of the early Corvettes were truly advanced thinkers. Vette

Note the date in the lower left corner: 12-30-60. This photo shows that the 1963 Sting Ray split-window coupe was basically completed; size, shape, proportion, bumper and taillight configuration. We can clearly see the trunk/hatchback line on the driver’s side rear deck that wraps down and then across the rear valance. This photo also tells us that by the summer or fall of 1960, the overall design was most likely completed.This 5-31-61 wind tunnel test photo shows the driver’s side of the Sting Ray with tufts of yarn and the passenger side with streaked ink dots. This was state-of-the-art wind tunnel testing in 1961 and really didn’t do much besides show the direction of airflow on the surface. Note that the trunk/hatchback is still there.In this 5-31-61 photo showing the rear side-view, we can clearly see the trunk/hatchback line on the rear deck, B-pillar and roof. This kind of wind tunnel testing looked interesting, but more important was the tests with scale models to measure front and rear lift; which from the beginning was not good.

Of the four C1 Corvette configurations (1953-’55, 1956-’57, 1958-’60 and 1961-’62) the 1961-’62 models had the largest trunks. For the Route 66 TV series guys, Tod Stiles and Buz Murdock, 12 cubic-feet was plenty of storage space for two vagabond young men.Ask any 1963-’67 Sting Ray coupe owner if a hatchback would have been nice to have. Sting Ray coupes had 10.5 cubic-feet of space behind the seats, but getting luggage in and out was a challenge. C2 convertibles only had 8.4 cubic-feet of space and nearly zero if the convertible top was down.C3 Corvettes from 1968-’77 have very limited storage space behind the seats, just 6.7 cubic-feet. Bill Mitchell chose the side-sails design for the C3 roof instead of the C2 Sting Ray-style roof that was part of the Mako Shark-II show car.The 1968-’75 convertible had a slight advantage over the coupe; in that if the owner unlatched the back of the convertible top, and lifted it forward; the rear deck convertible hatch could be opened to allow easy access to the 6.7 cubic-feet of storage space. But then you couldn’t put the top down.The 1978 wraparound fastback glass roof was a beautiful mid-cycle refresh for the C3 Corvette, but the glass was fixed. In 1979, the Cars & Concepts Company sold a hatchback kit for 1978-’79 Corvettes.Storage space for the 1978-’82 Corvette only went from 6.7 cubic-feet to 8.4 cubic-feet, but the visual effect was spectacular. The functioning hatch should have been part of the design beginning in 1978.To celebrate the end of the C3 generation, the Collector Edition was a fitting sendoff. The hatchback feature was only available with the Collector Edition option. Chevrolet sold 6,759 Collector Edition Corvettes; that’s 26.5 percent of all 1982 Corvettes. There are a lot of tired 1982 Collector Edition cars begging for a refresh and a crate engine.This exploded-view illustration from the fold-out poster that was part of the 1984 Corvette brochure shows off the C4’s clamshell hood, the one-piece lift-off roof panel and the lift hatchback. Storage space increased to 12.6 cubic-feet, the most ever offered in a Corvette to that date.The mechanism of the C4 hatchback was the same as the 1982 Collector Edition hatchback. Directly behind the storage area was the 20-gallon fuel tank.For the first time ever, Corvette owners could easily get two bags of golf clubs, suitcases for a weekend trip, or a week’s worth of grocery bags. Sports cars are not terribly useful cars, but this feature made owning a Corvette more user-friendly.The C5 was a total game-changer thanks to the all-new hydroformed frame and backbone structure. Engineers designed a dual fuel tank system that allowed the tanks to be tucked down on each side of the transaxle, allowing the storage space to extend back to the rear bumper.This is what 24.8 cubic-feet of storage space looks like. C5 Corvette coupes have the largest amount of storage space of any Corvette ever made. There are also three wells at the back of the storage areas. Unlike the C4 hatchback, the C5’s rear glass and deck are part of the hatchback.Chevrolet was selling the largest Corvette storage area ever in the 1998 sales brochure. The message was obvious; “Guys, when you own a 1998 Corvette, there’s plenty of room for a weekend getaway with your lady.”The C6 and C7 Corvettes are evolutionary designs based on the C5. An objective for C6 Corvette engineers was for it to have less mass than the C5. It’s length was reduced 5.1 inches to 174.6 inches, while the wheelbase was increased 1.2 inches to 105.7 inches.The C6 coupe’s storage space was reduced 2.4 cubic-feet; to 22.4. That’s still a lot of cargo space for a world-class sports car. C6 convertibles and Z06 models have 11 cubic-feet of storage; slightly less than the C4 coupe.Tadge Juechter and his team of engineers took the C7 Corvette deeper into the performance envelope by increasing the wheelbase 1.2 inches to 106.7 inches. The overall length was increased 1.3 inches to 176.9 inches. But the width on the base model was increased 1.3 to 73.9 inches and 77.1 inches for the Z06, Grand Sport and ZR1. The longer wheelbase and wider stance makes the C7 a much-improved Corvette.The reviews are consistent; the C7 is so good that no one has complained that the storage area is less than the C6’s. There’s still plenty of room to make ownership a delight.